2018 STATE OF INBOUND MARKETING

By Sean Tibor - February 14, 2018

As we closed out 2017 at Red Reef Digital, I reflected on the questions that my potential buyers were asking over the course of the year about Digital Marketing in general and Inbound Marketing in particular. With so many moving parts, increasingly complex marketing technology stacks, and emerging trends, it's harder and harder to maintain your knowledge and plan ahead for success each year. With that in mind, we've created the first installment in our 2018 Webinar Series to answer these questions and equip you with SMART planning tools for the coming year.

How we got here.

Professional digital marketers have been challenged with educating and converting internal teams to the importance of cutting-edge web technologies since the early 1990s. Our struggle began with email marketing, swiftly moving to search engine strategies and tactics, then to advanced mobile, and now augmented and virtual realities pushing us to the fringe.

By 2008, it became vital to connect our messaging and “calls-to-action” to both B2B and B2C buyers at their relevant point of need, starting with their initial search for solutions. We knew the importance of understanding our buyer from years of building out customer segments and personas using marketing demographics and psychographics. However, up until the rise of search engines, most of us weren't listening to our buyers or observing their intent.

We were speaking AT customers, broadcasting what we believed were the essential features and functions that were supposed to be vital to them.

It was here that the inbound marketing approach began to become the most crucial aspect of what we do.

So what is Inbound Marketing?

Inbound Marketing is a systematic approach of attracting potential buyers through relevant digital content that speaks to their needs and creates action at each stage of their buying process versus shouting at our prospects to buy more and buy now.

Now, it’s 2018, ten years later and we’re living with stale, outdated content on most company websites. We’re still running into content created in the mid-90s to early 2000s designed to act as online brochures. The obsolete communication is usually the most significant reason you see atrocious site analytics for time on site, bounce rates and poor conversions to purchase. Companies are not delivering answers to questions, simple strategy tools or providing guidance during the different stages of the Buyer’s Journey.

What is the State of Inbound Marketing in 2018?

This understanding leaves us with questions going into the new year. What is the State of Inbound Marketing? What are the new buyer behaviors and emerging trends for the coming year? As businesses, how do we set SMART Marketing goals that enable us to embrace these new trends and grow bigger and better?

As a way to begin answering these questions and provide insights into the evolution of Inbound, see our breakout of our webinar content for "2018 State of Inbound Marketing".

• Why Inbound Matters

• Leadership Challenges

• The Modern Buying Behavior

• Razor’s Edge Future Trends

• How to Set SMART Marketing Goals

We invite you to take one lunch hour out of your week to review the recording below. We look forward to your comments and questions.

Check out these other related posts to answer your questions about the most common Inbound Marketing Strategy challenges.

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